In a guest post here on October 4, 2016 (“10 awful truths about book publishing”), publisher Steven Piersanti remarked on the huge numbers of books being published today. Here’s what he wrote:

According to the latest Bowker Report (September 7, 2016), more than 700,000 books were self-published in the U.S. in 2015, which is an incredible increase of 375% since 2010. And the number of traditionally published books had climbed to over 300,000 by 2013 according to the latest Bowker figures (August 5, 2014). The net effect is that the number of new books published each year in the U.S. has exploded by more than 600,000 since 2007, to well over 1 million annually. At the same time, more than 13 million previously published books are still available through many sources.

But Steve’s article referred only to books that were recently published and in the English language. Taking another look at the piece, I began to wonder how many books have been published in the whole world, in every language.

Well, Google has an answer to that, of course! As of August 5, 2010, that number stood at 129,864,880. Staggering, isn’t it?

As you’re probably aware, Google Books has been scanning books in enormous numbers for many years now, as have many libraries. Google reported in October 2015 that the total number of titles scanned was over 25 million. The company intends to scan all 130,000,00!

If you’re thinking of writing a book, you might keep these numbers in mind. Getting anybody’s attention with a book these days is a tall order.

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Mal Warwick

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